


Days of Christmas Present

by GrayJay



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Christmas, Disaster Grey, Family, Family Feels, Gen, Rachel Summers is gay and I will fight you, fluff for some value of the term, summers family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 09:14:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17159297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrayJay/pseuds/GrayJay
Summary: Maybe somewhere--lost in Ahab’s kennels, discarded on Spiral’s cutting-room floor--there’s a Rachel with visions of sugar plums dancing in her head, but this Rachel wouldn’t recognize her if she saw her.





	Days of Christmas Present

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pdhudson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pdhudson/gifts).



The worst--and best--thing about Scott is that he never stops trying.

Her father had been the same. Even when Rachel was a kid, it had been a constant, equal parts comforting and frustrating: waking up in the middle of the night and stumbling to the kitchen for a glass of water, only to find Dad sitting in the dark, notebook beside him, watching Danger Room runs or mission footage; or curling up beside him on the couch to watch the quiet rhythm of his hands as he sewed buttons to cuffs and patches to knees with small, neat stitches; or listening to him and Mom argue over when it was time to give in and call a carpenter or a plumber or an electrician. He had never yelled over broken heirlooms or splashed paint, either: just calmly helped Rachel pick up the pieces and assess the options.

“Why do you have to fix everything?” Rachel had demanded once, after finding him puzzling over a broken toy she had long since abandoned.

He hadn’t said anything at first, just sat there with his head cocked and his forehead furrowed, the way he did when he was really thinking about something. “Well,” he had said, slowly, “For some people, breaking things is--a little too easy, no matter how careful they are. And it’s important to remember that the breaking doesn’t have to be the end of the story. That things can be fixed, too. Not always good as new, but--it’s important to remember that you can fix things.”

“You couldn’t fix the dryer,” Rachel had pointed out.

Her father had laughed. “No,” he said, “But that’s because I didn’t know enough about vent bellows. I’m better with planes.” He gave the toy fighter jet’s wheels an experimental spin, and handed it to Rachel. “There you go.”

So, it’s only sort of a surprise when Scott turns to her over the closing credits of _Skyfall_ and asks if she has plans for Christmas.

.

Movie night is a new tradition, their first tentative step back into speaking terms. It’s never been an official thing—life with the X-Men doesn’t really allow for scheduled commitments--but every few weeks, Rachel and Scott make it to the upstairs den with a few DVDs.

Emma always manages to find an excuse to be out of the house on those nights, for which Rachel is grudgingly grateful. Occasionally, someone else joins them--other X-Men, or insomniac students--but as often as not, it’s just the two of them silently sharing popcorn over spy thrillers and old romcoms.

Once, on Kitty’s vehement recommendation, Rachel had picked up _But I’m a Cheerleader_ , then blushed silently through the whole thing once she had realized what it was about.

Afterward, as they were clearing the glasses from the coffee table, Scott had said, carefully casual, “You know I don’t care about any of that, right? As long as you’re happy.” He had paused for a moment, then added, “Jean would have, too.”

She hadn’t been surprised that he knew--the gulf between what Scott noticed and what he mentioned had always been immense--but she hadn’t expected what a relief it had been to hear.

“Gonna join P.F.L.A.G.?” She scowled and dropped her voice to a clipped baritone. “My name is Scott, and my time-displaced alternate-universe daughter is a lesbian.”

Scott had laughed. “I’d probably leave out the time travel. But sure, if you want.”

She didn’t, but it was still nice to know. 

“I’m not much of a Christmas person,” Rachel tells Scott, which is more tactful than the truth: that her plans boil down to smoking until she can’t remember the date. 

Was there ever a time when she had gotten excited about Christmas? She can’t remember. Maybe somewhere--lost in Ahab’s kennels, discarded on Spiral’s cutting-room floor--there’s a Rachel with visions of sugar plums dancing in her head, but this Rachel wouldn’t recognize her if she saw her.

Scott nods.

“Why?” Rachel asks. It’s a stupid question, and she realizes the second it’s too late to bite back.

Scott shrugs. “I thought it might be nice to--” he starts. “We’ve never--” He shrugs and looks away. “Never mind.”

The alchemy of turning guilt into anger is instinctual. “What, you, me, and the White Queen? That’ll be one for the family album.”

“Emma has--other plans. I just thought--look, forget it.” He actually sounds hurt, and it takes the wind straight out of her sails. 

_For some people, breaking things is a little too easy_ , Rachel thinks. She hadn’t gotten it, back then; now, she does, or thinks she does.

“I’m sorry.” She forces out the words before she can swallow them back down. “That was shitty of me.”

“It’s fine,” Scott says. Whatever he’s feeling, he’s pushed it down hard enough to smooth his face into an amicably blank slate. “I overstepped.”

“No,” Rachel lies. “It’s--it sounds nice.” Maybe it would be. How would she know? “What were you thinking?”

“Honestly? I hadn’t really gotten that far.” His laugh is brittle. “I’m not much of a Christmas person, either.”

Fleeting impressions and scattered moments are all Rachel really has left of her childhood Christmases. She remembers light, color, warmth, the smell of fresh juniper leaves. She remembers the way the glass ornaments on the tree had tinkled when she shook it to rain tinsel down on her own head like snow, trying to weave it into the red of her mother’s hair. She remembers being fascinated by the fruit embroidered on the scalloped edge of a tablecloth, stroking the satiny purple stitches of a plum small enough to cover with the tip of a finger. 

She remembers wriggling out of her someone’s lap and wandering away from the den full of grandparents and cousins, exploring until she had come across her father in an upstairs bedroom. He had been sitting on the bed, tie loosened and jacket folded behind him, head in hands like he had a headache.

“I’m okay, baby,” he had told her when she asked. “I just needed a little quiet.” 

There were times, growing up, when Rachel’s father had seemed horribly, resignedly lonely, even in crowds--especially in crowds, hovering at the periphery or drifting in Jean’s wake. Rachel had made a point of always seeking him out and clinging to him with the fierce protectiveness of a child who hated the idea of anyone she loved left out. That Christmas, she had crawled up onto the bed next to him, curled up with her head in her lap and her arms around his waist. They had stayed there for a long time, cocooned in quiet; until Scott had sighed, and straightened his glasses, and asked if she was ready to go back downstairs.

Her own father had never really talked about his childhood, and her still-developing telepathy had been no match for his psychic defenses. Rachel knows more about this Scott--even if she stays out of his head as a matter of practice and courtesy--and the idea of him gritting his teeth through those bustling Grey family Christmases hurts somewhere deep in her chest.

“God, we’re a mess,” she says; and this time Scott laughs like he means it.

“Is there anything you’d like to do?” he asks.

 _Black out_ , Rachel thinks. _Disappear._ “Maybe just get the hell away,” she says.

Scott nods. “Oh,” he says, and she can hear the surprise in his voice, and the relief. “That sounds great.”

.

Rachel has never really gotten the hang of winter driving. Now she substitutes telekinesis for the four-wheel drive she should probably have asked after when she had borrowed the car, and the tire chains she hadn’t felt like wrestling with.

It’s snowing hard enough that she doesn’t see the chimney smoke until she’s almost at the cabin. She doesn’t bother hunting for the driveway, just parks behind the pickup whose bed is already half buried under a heap of snow and trudges up to the door, too tired from fighting the cold and wet on the road to bother keeping them out of the ratty sneakers she had pulled on without even considering the weather.

Scott meets her at the door. “I really need to teach you to drive on ice,” he tells her by way of greeting.

She snorts and takes the towel he’s holding out. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”

The interior of the cabin is bigger than she’s expecting, with a ceiling high enough to leave room for a loft over the kitchenet. It’s clearly gone unused for a while: there are drop cloths folded in a few corners and a bucket and mop propped against the wall, where Scott must have been cleaning earlier. But there’s a fire in the fireplace, and the whole place smells like cedar and fresh coffee; and Rachel has a backpack full of DVDs and weed, and nowhere to go for two whole days.

She’s also got half a case of jiffy pop, a purloined mostly-full bottle of Logan’s best whiskey, and a bag of M&M’s; along with the handful of tampons and half-bottle of dry shampoo that live in the bottom of her backpack. Let it never be said that a Summers--even if she’s going by Grey these days--didn’t come prepared.

Now, she towels the last of the snow out of her hair, and settles down on one of the chairs in front of the fireplace. There’s a sofa, too; and a shelf of books; and a big-screen TV that looks out of place against the warm wood of the walls.

Scott, on the other hand, looks perfectly at home, making grilled cheese sandwiches on the stove. Rachel remembers camping with her father: winding drives through mountain roads, and a sky full of more stars than she had ever seen at once. When she was little, she had sometimes imagined that she could see the Starjammer when she looked up at night.

Corsair--it had never occurred to Rachel to call him _Grandpa_ \--had appeared out of thin air every few years with armfuls of gifts. Rachel remembers how Dad’s jaw would tighten, and Mom would roll her eyes and say, “Chris, you really need to give us some warning next time,” but go make up the guest room anyway. He had never come for Christmas, not that she could recall.

While Scott cooks, Rachel adds her DVDs to the stack by the TV, and flips through Scott’s contributions: three seasons of _Leverage_ , _The Ipcress File_ , _John Wick_ , something in French that she’s never heard of, and--inexplicably-- _Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle_. 

“What do you want to drink?” Scott calls over. “I’ve got coffee, beer, orange juice, and about half a bottle of that shit Logan drinks.”

Maybe they can hack this after all.

.

Rachel wakes up confused. There’s the crackle of a fire, and a smell that her brain sluggishly recognizes as _food_ ; but none of it adds up to anything familiar until she hears someone start humming and registers _Dad_ before correcting to _Scott_.

 _Christmas_ , Rachel thinks--remembers--and drags herself the rest of the way into wakefulness.

She’s on the couch in front of the TV. She’s still in last night’s clothes, but at some point, Scott must have covered her up with one of the blankets from the loft. 

He’s back in the kitchenet, humming in distracted snatches while he cooks; and maybe it’s the smell of the pancakes, or the unfamiliar place; but every time she looks up, Rachel has to remind herself that he’s not her father, that her father is dead and this is a different Scott. This Scott is younger than Rachel’s dad would be now, not much older than he had been when he died. But he’s humming while he makes pancakes, and Rachel recognizes snatches of melodies she fell asleep to once, a lifetime ago.

“Merry Christmas,” he says, when she drags herself to the counter and pours a cup of coffee.

“Bah, Humbug,” she says, and steals a pancake from the top of the stack.

.

The transition from _John Wick_ to _Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle_ turns out to be surprisingly seamless.

Somewhere between the two, Rachel realizes she’s gone from hiding to actually having a good time. There’s probably something wrong with her, that the closest thing she’s felt to _Christmas_ in the warm and bright ways other people seem to experience it doesn’t come from a tree, or gifts, or carols; but two awkward, snowed-in misfits watching stoner comedy on top of a mountain.

“Merry Christmas,” she whispers, quietly enough that she doesn’t think Scott hears it until she sees him smile back over his book.

There’s no smell of cooking the next morning, and the fire’s gone out; and Rachel realizes with a start that both are because she’s been sleeping on Scott, with her head on his lap and her arms wrapped around his waist.

“Morning, kiddo,” he says, when she groggily disengages.

“Mmph,” Rachel replies, blinking until the room resolves into some kind of order. “Were you stuck there all night?”

“Most of it.” He heads to the kitchen and starts filling up the coffee pot.

“Thank you,” she says. She doesn’t know if she means for not waking her up, or for being there in the first place, or for the whole weird non-holiday, or something--everything--else.

Scott shrugs.

“Next year, we should bring Nate,” she says, and gets a startled smile in return.

She’s eating breakfast when Scott rummages through his knapsack and retrieves something small and wrapped in tissue paper.

“We said no gifts,” Rachel reminds him.

“This isn’t a gift,” Scott says. “I was going through some—things—a few days ago, and I thought you should have this.” He doesn’t mention Jean, but the impression that flickers through his mind is strong enough for Rachel to pick up without even trying, and tinged with so much love and grief that she has to push back tears.

“You sure it’s not a baseball glove?” she asks, because Nate has told her stories; and because it’s either sass or drown in the sudden swell of emotion.

“Why?” says Scott. “Did you want one?” Even with telepathy, Rachel has never been entirely sure when he’s joking. She’s not certain that he always knows, either.

Either way, she suspects that if she said yes, she’d find a new ball and glove by her door in a few days—probably unsigned, because Scott genuinely seems to think that if he doesn’t go out of his way to take credit, he won’t have to deal with thanks.

The bundle is tiny, and she pulls back the tissue paper to find a stylized phoenix on a delicate gold chain.

Rachel remembers her mom: fire, and life, and hot cocoa at the kitchen table; and the other Jean, who was all of those things and none. They’ve passed the phoenix force back and forth so many times that the necklace already feels like it belongs to her, sitting warm in the palm of her hand.

“She loved Christmas,” she says, aloud.

Scott nods. “Yeah, she did.”

And because there’s nothing left to say after that, they sit, quiet, and listen to the drips of melting snow.


End file.
